Crime is not cheap for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, said Lu­a­na Boy­ack, head of the Crime and Jus­tice Com­mit­tee of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC). "It's very cost­ly to im­ple­ment mea­sures to com­bat crime, to pre­vent crime. It's be­com­ing a huge bal­ance sheet item, in par­tic­u­lar." She said the cost of im­ple­ment­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in busi­ness­es is with­in the mil­lion-dol­lar brack­et and is one of the is­sues up­per­most on the com­mit­tee's agen­da. "The board's fo­cus this year is on crime," Boy­ack said. "It is very, very im­por­tant to us." Boy­ack said the com­mit­tee met two weeks ago with of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to sub­mit sug­ges­tions for the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty Bill, which is ex­pect­ed to go to the Par­lia­ment.

The bill will ad­dress the prob­lems which plague the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try and it is ex­pect­ed to en­hance em­ploy­ee ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing. Two prob­lems which af­fect the in­dus­try are: se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers who com­mit crimes and are al­lowed to re­turn to work af­ter a pe­ri­od of time and the is­sue se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers tak­ing a lunch hour and whether the em­ploy­er has to pay for that hour. Boy­ack was speak­ing at the end of the com­mit­tee's sem­i­nar on man­ag­ing se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices in the work­place, held yes­ter­day at the cham­ber's of­fices at West­moor­ings. Crime is a con­tin­u­ous dis­cus­sion among the mem­bers of the TTCIC. She said: "We have had cer­tain dis­cus­sions among our­selves. I imag­ine as the year rolls out fur­ther we would be mak­ing cer­tain pre­sen­ta­tions and rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the new min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (Jack Warn­er), but we don't have any­thing like a frame­work doc­u­ment."

The com­mit­tee's next event is en­ti­tled: "Break­fast with the ho­n­ourable Jack Warn­er, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty."

Bri­an Ram­sey, ex­pert in the field of se­cu­ri­ty sug­gest­ed that busi­ness­es should not choose a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny be­cause of the cost be­cause they may not get val­ue for mon­ey. "Or­gan­i­sa­tions should be seek­ing to se­lect a se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice provider that com­bines qual­i­ty with a favourable price so that you get the eco­nom­i­cal­ly most ad­van­ta­geous of­fer." In or­der to as­sess the qual­i­ty of a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, he said busi­ness­es should look at the ca­pa­bil­i­ty and mo­ti­va­tion of the ac­tu­al of­fi­cers, the plan­ning and su­per­vi­sion of the of­fi­cers, the tech­ni­cal, op­er­a­tional and hu­man re­source in­fra­struc­ture sup­port­ing the guard­ing per­son­nel and the track record and phi­los­o­phy of the com­pa­ny.